Early last Thanksgiving morning, a longtime troublemaker tore out of a bar parking lot in Paradise, California. His headlights were off and he almost hit several bar patrons as he sped away. The troublemaker was, not surprisingly, drunk. Paradise police officer Patrick Feaster was parked near the bar, saw the drunk flee the parking lot, turned on his overheads and tried to stop him. Not surprisingly, the drunk, Andrew Thomas, didn’t stop. Instead, he rolled his SUV. His wife was ejected and died. Officer Feaster pulled up to the accident seconds later.

None of this is unusual. Drunks drive stupid, run from police, and kill innocent people every day in America. But what happened next was completely out of the ordinary: the officer, for no apparent reason, shot the driver. And he wasn’t charged for it.

I’ve been a cop for two decades, have written about why the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri was justified, and have spent many frustrating hours trying to explain to police critics that the real world is nothing like the TV shows they think are real. I’m extremely jaded about criticism of police tactics from people who know literally nothing about real-world lethal force encounters. When I first saw Facebook posts about the Paradise shooting, after the DA announced the officer wouldn’t be charged, I figured the posts were routine “guys who know nothing about police work making stupid comments” nonsense.

I watched as, after the accident, Officer Feaster reported the rollover to dispatch. I watched him get out of his patrol vehicle and seem to casually walk toward the wrecked SUV, which had come to rest on its driver’s side. I watched Andrew Thomas begin to climb out of the SUV’s window. Both his hands were visible, and there was no obvious indication of a weapon. I watched Officer Feaster casually draw his weapon, casually point it at Thomas, casually fire one shot, stop walking briefly as Thomas falls back into the SUV, and casually reholster. I watched him saunter to the SUV, look into the window toward Thomas, and report on the radio that “I’ve got an unresponsive female, I’ve got a male in the car refusing to get out.”

Feaster shooting Andrew Thomas

I watched backup arrive. Feaster doesn’t mention he had shot the driver. I saw more backup arrive. Feaster still doesn’t say anything. As other officers check on the ejected woman and Thomas, I watched Feaster search the area he had been when he fired the shot (most likely looking for his spent shell).

Feaster appearing to look for his spent shell

The video ended before EMS arrived, but reports I read said Feaster still didn’t say he had shot Thomas. It wasn’t until EMS pulled Thomas out and saw the gunshot wound that Feaster finally admitted he “might have” shot him. And Feaster didn’t actually say anything until his supervisor told an officer to go back to the bar and find out if Thomas had been shot there.

Eleven minutes passed between the moment Feaster shot Thomas and the moment he finally told someone about it. Eleven minutes Thomas could have bled out. And Feaster didn’t say a word, to anyone, until he basically got caught.

Feaster claimed the shooting was accidental. Thomas was paralyzed from the waist down. Feaster was immediately suspended, and the incident was referred to a grand jury. On December 10th, the District Attorney announced Feaster wouldn’t face criminal charges for the shooting.

As I watched the video, after I read that Feaster wouldn’t be charged, I had a “What the f**k?” moment. Don’t get me wrong; I understood why Officer Feaster drew his weapon, and I understand why he pointed it. Thomas was a felon who had just fled an officer, and drawing your weapon is normal during a felony stop. It’s also normal to point your weapon at a felon to force compliance. It’s not normal to put your finger on the trigger if you don’t see an immediate lethal threat, and it’s not normal to shoot an apparently unarmed man who presents no threat. From the video, I saw no reason the officer should have fired. It just didn’t make sense, and Feaster appeared to have done it intentionally.

But Feaster said it was an accident. The DA believed that, based on two very flimsy pieces of “evidence”:

Feaster fired in mid-stride, jerked his head sideways and “stutter-stepped” after firing, which the DA believes indicated surprise; and

Feaster fired only one shot, but officers are trained to fire at least twice.

The DA’s statement to the Paradise PD Chief says, “The dashcam video also shows Officer Feaster was not prepared for and was surprised by the gun’ s firing. The pistol discharges in mid stride and the officer both flinches his head to the right and does a ‘stutter step’ indicative of an officer not prepared for nor intentionally firing his pistol. Additionally officers normally train to fire a minimum of two shots when they intentionally fire their sidearms at training.”

I don’t get the DA’s reasoning, and I can refute his points:

In the academy, officers don’t typically train to fire while walking. But many private instructors offer advanced training, including pretty basic “shooting while walking” drills. Some officers train together on their own, and incorporate advanced training they’ve received from various instructors. At the very least, the DA should investigate whether Feaster had ever been trained to shoot while walking;

Feaster’s head movement and stutter-step could indicate surprise, or could have been Feaster simply assessing his shot before deciding whether to fire again (by the way, I didn’t see a stutter-step, I just saw Feaster stop walking long enough to fire); and

Officers were historically trained to fire two shots and assess, but we also train to fire until the threat ceases. We’ve moved away from the brainless “two shots no matter what” training that has probably gotten officers killed. I know an officer who got shot at, drew and fired twice, reholstered, and then realized the suspect was still shooting at him. To avoid training officers to make that mistake we don’t teach a two-shot minimum, and we don’t teach officers to fire after the threat has been neutralized. There have been many recent, justified police shootings where the officer fired only one shot. And if Feaster was planning on shooting twice, he carrying a .45 which has significant recoil. It’s not unreasonable to ask whether Featser didn’t shoot twice because Thomas dropped out of sight too quickly for Feaster to get back on his sights for a second shot.

“In examining Officer Feaster’s criminal liability, we note first that this, thankfully, is not a homicide case and we therefore only examine those Penal Code sections dealing with the discharge of a firearm. All of those sections, be it Penal Code section 245 (Assault with a Firearm), 246 (Discharge of Firearm at an Occupied Vehicle) or 246.3 (Discharge of a Firearm in a Grossly Negligent Manner), all require proof the trigger of the firearm was pulled ‘willfully’ or under circumstances in which the display of the gun was unreasonable. As noted in Penal Code section7, the word ‘willfully’ when ‘applied to the intent with which an act is done, implies simply a purpose or willingness to commit the act (i.e. pull the trigger)’. An unintentional or accidental pulling of the trigger, as long as the firearm was originally displayed in a legal and reasonable manner – i.e. an officer in the reasonable performance of his duty of making a felony vehicle stop – does not, under the law, allow for criminal charges.”

Again, I get why Feaster drew and pointed his weapon. I’m also all for using as much force as necessary, as soon as it’s necessary. I’ve been in plenty of confusing, dangerous situations where I came close to shooting people I later found out weren’t a threat, and I’m more than willing to give a cop the benefit of the doubt. I understand that good guys can make good-faith mistakes under stress, and I don’t want any cop trying to do his best punished for it. I also understand that we cops live in a grey area, where neat lines and classroom theory get beaten senseless by ugly reality. I can defend a good guy who made a bad call. But I’m not willing to stand up for an officer who blatantly shot someone for no reason, then didn’t even bother to tell other officers or paramedics.

In this job, we need the public’s trust. We don’t necessarily need the public’s approval; as in the Mike Brown case, there will be times an officer is completely justified and the public just won’t accept it. But in cases where the shooting is obviously not justified, the officer even admits it’s not justified, the DA says it’s not justified, and someone who’s a jerk but didn’t deserve to get shot gets shot and paralyzed anyway, the officer should be charged. In Texas, if I shot someone the way Feaster did, I’d at least be charged with felony Deadly Conduct. And I’d deserve it.

I don’t like criticizing another officer, and I don’t like calling for a cop to be charged. I can maybe accept that Feaster was so ill-suited to police work, so inept, that he accidentally fired but wasn’t sure he fired, and spent eleven critical minutes trying to convince himself he hadn’t fired. Maybe Feaster didn’t intend to shoot anyone, and was just a horrible cop. I think it’s more likely he intended to shoot, and realized immediately he had screwed up.

Either way, if we cops expect the public to view us as the good guys, we should call for Feaster’s prosecution.

P.S. Andrew Thomas died after DA Ramsey’s announcement of no charges. I’m waiting to see if he charges Feaster now that his actions did in fact result in Thomas’ death.

Chris Hernandez is a 20 year police officer, former Marine and currently serving National Guard soldier with over 25 years of military service. He is a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and also served 18 months as a United Nations police officer in Kosovo. He writes for BreachBangClear.com and Iron Mike magazine and has published two military fiction novels, Proof of Our Resolve and Line in the Valley, through Tactical16 Publishing. He can be reached at chris_hernandez_author@yahoo.com or on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ProofofOurResolve).

I’m not a Trump supporter. I’d rather immolate myself than vote for him. The man is half lunatic, half moron, and half douchebag. He’s a rich, arrogant tool.

(Photo by Greg Allen/Invision/AP)

But he’s not an ISIS recruiting tool.

Muslim terrorists don’t hate us because Trump says offensive things about them. They hate us because of who they are, not because of what we do. This isn’t as simple as “don’t make them mad and they won’t attack us.”

ISIS will attack us because they think they’re supposed to. If we’re polite and civil to them, they’ll be in a good mood when they attack. If we’re rude and offensive, they’ll be in a bad mood when they attack. Either way, they’ll attack.

In the face of a new terror threat that’s rapidly becoming existential, America has erected a vast, impenetrable barrier of self-loathing and victim blaming. Every attack by Muslim terrorists evokes shouted comparisons to “The Crusades! Slavery! Attacks on Planned Parenthood!” from the intended victims. ISIS doesn’t have to morally justify their brutal crimes, because Americans do it for them.

Yes, the Crusades were bad. The Muslim invasions of Europe, which started almost 400 years before the first crusade, were also bad. Slavery was bad in every culture that practiced it, which was pretty much every culture on earth including African cultures. Americans fought a war to eradicate slavery, and ended it long before many other countries (the African country of Mauritania didn’t outlaw slavery until the 1980s). The Planned Parenthood attack in Colorado was bad, and was in fact terrorism. But even if it was equally bad as ISIS massacres in principle, it wasn’t equally bad in its effect. If every life is precious, 130 murders are worse than three.

For every atrocity our enemies commit, they (and their American apologists) can point to some historical atrocity that equaled it. We could do the same thing. And no matter how desperately we seek moral equivalence, in a hundred years our descendants won’t be justified in massacring innocent Muslims because ISIS is massacring innocent non-Muslims today.

Here, ISIS massacres Ethiopian Christians. No, that doesn’t mean Ethiopian Christians are now justified in massacring innocent Muslims. Just like the Crusades don’t mean ISIS is in any way justified in what they do.

But too many Americans keep thinking Muslim terrorists are motivated by our actions rather than their own beliefs. Our President has been saying for some time that “[Guantanamo Bay] is used by terrorists around the world to help recruit jihadists.” Yet 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history, happened before we started putting terror suspects in Gitmo. So did the USS Cole attack. So did Khobar towers. So did the African embassy bombings. So did the first World Trade Center bombing. So did the Beirut Marine barracks bombing. If holding terror suspects in Gitmo is such a huge recruiting tool for terrorism, what tool got so many terrorists to carry out so many terror attacks before Gitmo opened? And would closing Gitmo do anything more than restore us to the pre-Gitmo status quo, when terrorists wanted to kill us for non-Gitmo reasons?

Now the presumptive democratic presidential nominee has jumped on the “it’s our fault” bandwagon, claiming “[Trump] is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter. They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.” Besides the fact that Hillary Clinton has no actual evidence to support that claim, does she really think aspiring terrorists are saying “I was going to be a peaceful moderate, but then Trump said Muslims shouldn’t be allowed into America! Now I’ll blow myself up for Allah!”?

And actually, Trump isn’t in the latest ISIS video. But President Obama, VP Biden, G.W. Bush and Bill Clinton are. You heard that right; Obama and Biden, “liar” George Bush and “adulterer” Bill Clinton are being used as ISIS recruiting tools.

(This is bad news; however, the claim has been challenged partly because some of those British Muslims joined other jihadist groups but were included in ISIS numbers. This gives us the good news that British Muslims serve ISIS and the British military in near-equal numbers. So there’s that.)

And ISIS doesn’t rely on the actions of the Great Satan to lure recruits. In its magazine Dabiq ISIS does quote hawks like John McCain, but puts more emphasis on the word of god, the duty of all non-apostate Muslims to join ISIS’s jihad, the paradise awaiting martyrs, etc. It has interviews with martyrs before their deaths. It calls its fighters terrorists and shows them decapitating prisoners. It even shows, as a recruiting tool, pictures of dead ISIS fighters. It tells Muslims who can’t make the trip to Syria to kill non-Muslims wherever they are.

That is in fact a dead ISIS fighter on the left, being used as a recruiting photo.

They were doing this before Trump opened his stupid mouth. Muslims were heeding ISIS’s call by the tens of thousands before Trump. Muslims following ISIS orders or suggestions killed 130 people in Paris, fourteen in San Bernardino and tried to kill who knows how many in Garland, Texas. That was all pre-Trump.

Why does anyone think ISIS cares so much about what we say? If ISIS followers keep committing mass murders, of course we’re going to respond negatively. Of course we’re going to reevaluate our refugee policies. Of course we’re going to take a hard look at who’s a threat and who’s not. ISIS knows this. Who really believes ISIS commands its followers to kill us all, then whines “They said mean things about us!” after its followers try to kill us all?

Some of the 89 dead inside Paris’ Bataclan theater. No, ISIS didn’t kill these people because an American said something mean.

Let’s stop pretending ISIS only hates us because we’re bad people. ISIS hates us because ISIS is full of bad people. No, we’re not perfect, and we don’t have an unblemished foreign policy history. But if supporting dictators or using proxy armies to fight our enemies creates terrorism, then legions of Vietnamese suicide bombers should be attacking America. They’re not, because Vietnamese communists aren’t possessed by an ideology that encourages massacring civilians.

ISIS is possessed of such an ideology, and is proud of it. That 1400 year-old ideology is why they want to kill us. Trump is a clown, but even the democratic party can’t accuse him of creating ISIS ideology. Trump has done a million other stupid things he deserves blame for, but he’s not an ISIS recruiting tool. So stop looking for ways to blame America for Islamic terrorism, and start laying blame on the people who actually are terrorists.

Chris Hernandez is a 20 year police officer, former Marine and currently serving National Guard soldier with over 25 years of military service. He is a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and also served 18 months as a United Nations police officer in Kosovo. He writes for BreachBangClear.com and Iron Mike magazine and has published two military fiction novels, Proof of Our Resolve and Line in the Valley, through Tactical16 Publishing. He can be reached at chris_hernandez_author@yahoo.com or on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ProofofOurResolve).

I’m going to do something unexpected today. I’m going to agree with anti-police activists from the political left. But the activists probably won’t be happy about it.

Anti-police activists claim the many unjustified killings of black men by police officers show a systemic problem. They say these killings aren’t unconnected, disparate events caused by a handful of bad apples; instead, these incidents illustrate a problem within police culture. Even if the majority of police are good, the fact that so many bad ones unjustifiably kill people proves the entire system is corrupt. The activists argue that good police officers who don’t stand up to denounce bad ones are themselves part of the problem.

I’ve been a cop for over twenty years. I’ve argued that the shooting of Michael Brown was justified, and that NYPD didn’t intend to kill Eric Garner. I’ve defended police culture in general. Even so, I think those anti-police activists have a point.

Now I’ll get to the part that anti-police activists, and the larger left-leaning population behind them, won’t like:

Doesn’t this same logic apply to Islamic terrorism? Most Muslims are peaceful, but a small number carry out many, many acts of terrorism. Those acts of terrorism aren’t denounced by enough peaceful Muslims, and are quietly supported by a huge number (up to 195 million, according to a Pew Research poll). How do people point to a string of isolated murders by police and conclude police culture has a problem, then point to a string of murders by jihadists but conclude Islam doesn’t have the same problem?

I don’t ask this question as a devout Christian conservative who despises Islam. I ask this as an agnostic political independent who’s had overwhelmingly positive experiences with Muslims. I lived as a UN civilian police officer in a Muslim country, worked daily with Muslims, had many Muslim friends, learned their language and culture, didn’t hide my beliefs, and never felt the least bit threatened. In Afghanistan I risked my life with and for Afghan Muslim soldiers, who risked their lives with and for me. Yes, Taliban tried to kill me, and I tried to kill them; that didn’t change my feelings about the Muslims beside me.

Here at home I’ve served with American Muslim cops and soldiers, and maintain friendships with many Muslims outside my professions. I helped a Muslim friend with her first novel. Not long ago I attended a murder-mystery party held by a Lebanese Muslim friend and her white Christian husband for their son, who had just been hired as a police officer. The guests were white, black, Hispanic and Arab, included Muslims, Christians and at least one guy who rejects all religion, and we had a great time together (by the way, at any party hosted by an Arab the food is awesome).

Unfortunately, despite my personal experience, Islamic terrorism is a threat. That’s objective fact. We’re all aware of the 368 innocent people slaughtered by jihadists in San Bernardino, Sinai and Paris, but we don’t often realize those attacks are relatively small potatoes compared to the unending campaign of murder outside the western world. In the last two years terrorism, nearly all of it Islamic, has killed over fifty thousand people worldwide. Al Qaeda’s decades-old threat has been supplanted by ISIS, an organization with tens of thousands of adherents and funded by forty to fifty million dollars per month in extortion, oil and tax money. ISIS has declared war on us, and someday we’ll figure out that war doesn’t require agreement from both parties. When war is declared on you by thirty thousand religious fanatics with weapons, combat experience, hundreds of millions in capital and a burning hatred for anyone who doesn’t agree with their beliefs, you’re at war whether you like it or not.

I’m sure the victims in San Bernardino were thankful no furniture fell on them as they were being mowed down by Islamic terrorists.

Health risks resulting from lifestyle choices are voluntary. Accidents are brutal, tragic and accidental. Intentional acts of violence against the innocent are different. We have a stronger reaction against the kidnapping and murder of one child than a car accident that kills two children. Because one is a blatant expression of pure evil, the other is an unintentional happenstance than can be caused or suffered by literally anyone. Laughing off threats of genocide from dedicated murderers because we’re more likely to die of a heart attack or car accident is pretty stupid.

Yes, I get it. There’s very little chance we’ll be killed by jihadist suicide bombers. There’s also very little chance of dying in a mass shooting by a white anti-government extremist. There’s little chance a black man will be killed by a police officer. Yet every act of violent right-wing extremism provokes a (justifiable) uproar, and after every mass shooting the President and many others demand major legislative changes. Every unjustified police shooting of a black man sparks demonstrations and demands for change. If the slim chance of dying in a mass shooting from an anti-government zealot demands acknowledgment and action, and the slim chance of being murdered by a police officer demands public demonstration, so does the relatively slim chance of dying at the hands of Muslim terrorists.

In the last week I’ve heard two people, one a college professor and one an elected representative, minimize the threat of Islamic terrorism. The professor emphasized that almost all American Muslims oppose terrorism, and claimed Muslims themselves have stopped hundreds of attacks since 9/11 by turning in the plotters. The representative made the same point, and said nearly every week peaceful American Muslims turn in extremists trying to carry out jihadist attacks. The professor said America’s three million Muslims are overwhelmingly peaceful, the representative said the same thing but put the number of American’s Muslims at eight million.

So approximately one or two percent of our population has plotted hundreds of unsuccessful attacks since 9/11 and fails in a new plot nearly every week, and that’s supposed to convince me the threat is negligible? And that’s not including the small number of successful attacks like the Boston Marathon, Chattanooga or San Bernardino. It doesn’t take into account the American-born Muslims who saw videos of ISIS burning and decapitating prisoners, learned about their campaign of legitimized rape, heard the call to kill their neighbors, decided “That all sounds good to me,” and joined the jihad.

This isn’t hypothetical. One of those American-born Muslims went to school with my daughter. He traveled overseas to join ISIS, came home to visit family, and got caught. He’s not in jail. I now have an aspiring ISIS murderer living just minutes from my family.

We’ve seen, over and over, that intelligent, educated, wealthy Muslims who grow up in the west or live here for years can still turn against us. We saw it when nineteen wealthy, privileged Muslim men flew airplanes into our buildings. We saw it when a doctor from a British hospital rammed a car bomb into Glasgow International Airport. We saw it when an educated, foreign-born American Muslim engineer killed five American service members in Tennessee. We should have learned by now that some Muslims live in our culture, experience our freedom and opportunity, and still want to destroy it.

Yet as a nation we still embrace the narrative of the poor, oppressed victim who had no option but to blow himself up. Our most senior officials sometimes refuse to even acknowledge Islam as a factor in Islamic terrorism. After the Charlie Hebdo attack and massacre of Jews at a kosher café that followed, our President referred to the cafe victims as having been randomly shot even though the killer himself said he targeted them because they were Jews. Despite The San Bernardino attack’s immediate indicators of Islamic terrorism, the President resisted acknowledging the obvious and only did so after ridiculously asserting “this could have been workplace-related”. As if an employee had an argument with a coworker, went home, put on military gear and armed himself with an AR-15 and pistol, built pipe bombs, grabbed his wife, and drove back to work to carry out an obviously planned mass murder.

On the day of the San Bernardino attack I made these predictions. I’m not a terrorism expert and had no inside information. How did I and others immediately recognize the attack as Islamic terrorism, yet our President couldn’t?

Islamic terrorism is a huge threat. We need to stop dancing around that fact. The very small Muslim population of America, even though it’s mostly peaceful, generates attacks and failed attacks at a rate far out of proportion to its actual numbers. According to at least one report, 69 planned jihadist attacks against the United States have failed since 9/11. And since Islamic terrorism kills far more Muslims than anyone else, aren’t we putting peaceful Muslims at more risk by not addressing the threat they face?

Just as we’ve acknowledged a problem integral to police culture, we need to acknowledge the problem within Islam that leads so many of its adherents to commit horrible crimes. By acknowledging that problem, I don’t have to turn against Muslims who aren’t a threat. My friends aren’t the problem. The millions of American Muslims who oppose terrorism aren’t the problem. But hiding among those millions are a small number who do want to destroy us, who are in fact Muslims and do in fact wish to murder us in the name of their religion. Acting as if the elephant isn’t in the bedroom isn’t helping us, and ultimately doesn’t help peaceful Muslims either.

Chris Hernandez is a 20 year police officer, former Marine and currently serving National Guard soldier with over 25 years of military service. He is a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and also served 18 months as a United Nations police officer in Kosovo. He writes for BreachBangClear.com and Iron Mike magazine and has published two military fiction novels, Proof of Our Resolve and Line in the Valley, through Tactical16 Publishing. He can be reached at chris_hernandez_author@yahoo.com or on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ProofofOurResolve).

This interview was first published on Breach Bang Clear on November 18th, 2015.

Jim Webb is no longer running for president as a democrat. He may, however, run as an independent. On November 9th, I interviewed him. Near the end of the interview, in response to a question I hadn’t even planned on asking, he said The Most Presidential Thing Any Candidate Has Ever Said. I can’t even imagine the other candidates saying it. Hell, it was more presidential than anything an actual president has ever said.

The entire interview was interesting, and started really well. Webb asked what I did in the military, and we discovered we both taught pistol marksmanship in the Marine Corps. He talked about his love for the Colt 1911. I joked that I’m partial to pistols designed within the last century. He laughed and bragged about his beloved H&K P7, a gift from the German Army.

If Hillary ever touched a gun, she’d probably amputate her hand in shame. Give Bernie Sanders a gun and he’ll automatically assume the triumphant pose of a socialist propaganda poster. Offer Ben Carson a gun and he’ll call it a grain dispenser made by The Adversary. I’ll never know what Trump would do with a gun, because if I see him armed I’ll run for my life.

But Jim Webb? He’s trained with a pistol, used one in combat, and to this day loves his .45. That’s just cool.

As the interview progressed I learned a few things about Webb. He is in fact as serious as he comes across in public, although levity does lurk beneath the rough exterior. He has an experience-based, gut-level understanding of subjects that are theoretical to other candidates. He doesn’t back down from aggravating questions, even when he gets defensive and his voice goes all “get off my lawn”.

I freely admit trying to trick him; at the beginning of the interview I asked if any topic was off limits. I did this specifically to probe for a soft spot in Webb’s armor, to look for weakness his political opponents could identify and exploit. I also wanted to know if Webb was only gruff and straightforward on the surface, but behind the scenes engineers interviews like any other politician.

“Nah, nothing’s off limits,” he answered. “We can just have an open discussion. If any questions make me uncomfortable, I’ll let you know.”

Well, I did make him uncomfortable. Obviously uncomfortable. Especially when I asked the unplanned question that prompted him to say The Most Presidential Thing Any Candidate Has Ever Said. But even when I got under his skin he didn’t shut down the interview, or change the subject, or tell me to shag off and slam the phone onto the receiver.

After the interview, I planned to write about our entire conversation. I thought I’d mention his hesitant defense of his Obamacare vote, his novels’ innocuous cultural and sexual references that one political opponent twisted into a smear campaign, his heated exchange with President G.W. Bush during the Iraq War. I was going to outline Webb’s very reasonable belief that an independent can win a presidential election, and explain that he doesn’t have to pretend to come from a working-class background because he actually does come from a working-class background. I planned on writing at length about his famous comment during the presidential debate, when he seemed to joke about an enemy soldier he killed in combat.

I expected to mention that he’s twice left political parties because he chose principles and country over partisanship, that he intentionally quit the Senate after one term because he isn’t a career politician, and that he has decades of relevant experience as a statesman. I was going to point out that he wrote the Post-9/11 GI Bill, something I wasn’t aware of until we spoke. I thought I’d give examples of Webb working with his political opposition to get things done for the entire country. I was even going to point out that unlike a certain candidate who claims to “stand up for the little guy” while simultaneously taking millions of dollars from Wall Street and asking for two billion dollars in campaign donations, Webb doesn’t even have a “Super PAC” and won’t accept million-dollar donations.

Then, on November 13th, ISIS attacked Paris. And I realized the most important part of the interview was my unplanned question, which produced The Most Presidential Thing Any Candidate Has Ever Said.

So what was the unplanned question?

Of all things, it was about the screenplay he wrote for the movie Rules of Engagement. I asked it on a whim, when we were already way past his time limit. I mentioned the controversial scene where Marines fire into a crowd of civilians, the American audiences that cheered when they saw it, and asked if he was worried that it broadcast an unintended message. And I obviously pissed him off.

He was immediately defensive. He rambled a bit. He even questioned why he should have to respond.

“I worked on Rules for nine years,” Webb said. “But I actually didn’t write the final screenplay. The director owns it, and he went with a slightly different version for the film. I don’t even remember the particulars of that scene, since it’s been fifteen years since I watched it. I think it was a crowd shooting at Marines, and they shoot back. And look, I don’t want to go on and on about this, and I don’t think I need to sit here and defend or attack that movie. That’s something you should take up with the director.”

The movie looked like it portrayed mass murder. Webb seemed to be trying to distance himself from it. I was pretty sure I understood; Webb worked on a project for years, but someone changed his work into something he didn’t want it to be. Instead of telling him that, I stayed quiet and just listened. Eventually, he talked through the anger and explained why he wrote Rules of Engagement.

“You know, the inspiration for that scene was the time I spent as a journalist in Beirut in 1983. I left about a month before the building was blown up and hundreds of our troops were killed. I spent a lot of time with the Marines, and was just amazed at how restrictive the rules of engagement were.”

Webb in Beirut, 1983

This was thirty-three years ago. Webb is not an emotional man, and he kept an even tone as he spoke. But his frustration, even decades later, was obvious.

“At one point I was on the perimeter with the Marines, and they had a building about three hundred meters away. And we see three guys with rifles walk into the building, go up a couple floors into a room and start shooting at us. I was with the company commander, and I told him, ‘Get a TOW [antitank missile] and blow those guys away.’ He said, ‘If they’re shooting at us with rifles, we can only shoot back with rifles. We can’t escalate.’”

Seconds later, Webb said something that floored me. I’m positive no other presidential candidate has ever said anything remotely like it. It was The Most Presidential Thing Any Candidate Has Ever Said.

“And when the three guys stopped firing, the Marines had to stop firing,” Webb said. “The guys walked out of the building at sling arms, and just walked away. I said, ‘Shoot the motherfuckers!’ But the Marines couldn’t. And not even a month later, the building gets blown up.

“So when I was originally thinking about Rules of Engagement, that’s what was on my mind. I was asking how much we’re going to restrict our people from defending themselves. It’s crazy that we do that, and the other side learns our restrictions real fast. When you put people into harm’s way there are laws of war, and you respect those laws of war. But you don’t tie your people’s hands like that.

“I learned a lot in Vietnam. I operated in populated areas constantly, and there were tough moral decisions. I made some of the hardest moral decisions of my life at 23 years old. But, you have to take care of your people.’”

Shoot the motherfuckers. And take care of your people.

These aren’t the words of a jingoistic warmonger; Webb not only opposed the Iraq War, he wrote an impassioned (and prophetic) warning about its consequences. No, these are the words of a President. Not a professional politician, not an egomaniac, not a Utopian idealist, not a nice guy with no experience, but a Commander in Chief. Isn’t taking care of his people a President’s most basic responsibility?

Maybe I’ll tell you a story.

One bright sunny day a few years ago, there was this firefight in Afghanistan. American and Afghan troops in a remote valley were ambushed. A Marine captain died a hero’s death, engaging enemy with his carbine while calling for support. Three brave Afghans fell, mowed down as they scrambled for cover. The Taliban outnumbered us, and were using civilian homes as fighting positions. No civilians were in the valley; we couldn’t see any, and intelligence reports said they evacuated before the fight. But we couldn’t hit those dug-in Taliban with mortars, artillery or air strikes. Because a civilian might have been hurt.

We lost that fight. Not because we couldn’t win. Not because we were paralyzed by our losses. Not because we on the ground lacked the will. But because rules imposed from above ripped victory from our hands.

I strongly suspect the War on Terror is about to intensify. I think our last fourteen years of combat will someday be regarded as only the opening shots in a generations-long battle. I believe Paris shows us the existential threat posed by terrorism. I have to accept a bitter truth: my wartime service didn’t ensure peace in my children’s lives, or my grandchildren’s lives. Their generations will have to step forward and take up arms, just as mine has.

Someday, my son might find himself under fire from an enemy who wants to kill him, his fellow soldiers and every American citizen behind him. Maybe he’ll have to get on the radio and request permission to return fire. Maybe that request will go all the way to the White House.

The president might say that returning fire would affect the next election. Or remind my son that climate change is a bigger threat than the people shooting at him. Maybe the president, despite believing he’d “be so good at the military your head will spin”, would really have no idea what to do. Maybe he’d even answer with “I can’t lose the whole democratic party,” as one unnamed current president said about the Afghanistan War. Maybe the president would leave my son and his troops hanging, because the political fallout from letting them fight would be worse than letting them die.

But we know how President Webb would answer. Because unlike any other candidate, he’s been in my son’s hypothetical boots. He’s been under real, not imaginary, sniper fire. He didn’t just make an unverifiable (and unbelievable) claim that he tried to join the Marines, he actually joined the Marines. Rather than seek student deferments, he faced combat’s horrible moral quandaries in Vietnam. In Beirut he saw our troops figuratively crippled by politically-driven rules of engagement, before those troops were literally crippled by an enemy who had learned not to fear them.

President Webb wouldn’t put politics over his troops. He’d give two orders:

“Shoot the motherfuckers. And take care of your people.”

That’s what every president should say. And it’s why I, and any American who understands the threat we face, should vote for Jim Webb.

*********

Read the original article at http://www.breachbangclear.com/fighting-words-and-1911s-an-exclusive-interview-with-jim-webb/

Chris Hernandez is a 20 year police officer, former Marine and currently serving National Guard soldier with over 25 years of military service. He is a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and also served 18 months as a United Nations police officer in Kosovo. He writes for BreachBangClear.com and Iron Mike magazine and has published two military fiction novels, Proof of Our Resolve and Line in the Valley, through Tactical16 Publishing. He can be reached at chris_hernandez_author@yahoo.com or on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ProofofOurResolve).

Maybe you’ve heard of a recent Slate article, in which the writer rails against the horrible evils of spooning. This writer is suffering through a year-long separation from his partner, and while soul-searching his loneliness realized he was wrong to miss spooning. I’ve always loved spooning; my wife has a great butt, and I fall asleep every night pressed against it. But this Slate writer informs me I was wrong to enjoy this; apparently, spooning is practically a form of physical torture.

“After about 10 minutes, spooning becomes horribly uncomfortable…
And even if you do manage to sort out a configuration that works (for a time), the heat—the hateful, pajama-soaking heat—will soon build to intolerable levels.”

I had no idea I was suffering so badly the last twenty-two years. Crazy me, I actually thought I enjoyed holding my wife close every night. But not only was I suffering, I was sinking into a horrible moral quagmire.

“If the argument against spooning were only a physical one, I would not feel so strongly…But there’s a deeper issue here, a troubling aspect of spooning that emerges in the dimension of ideology, of what it all means.”

And what does spooning mean? Sexism, of course. And shocking cultural privilege. And, as an added bonus, violence.

“Big spoons are manly and will take care of you (provided you let them use you to take care of themselves); little spoons are fragile, passive creatures that need to be held and kept safe. This, of course, is fundamentally a sexist arrangement, one that casts the big spoon as ‘the man’ and the little spoon as ‘the woman.’ To say that this power imbalance is built into all acts of spooning—whichever the sexes engaged—is not, I think, an overstatement. Indeed, I would argue that spooning is always already a power play, a perverse strategy by which we nightly enact the unjust relations of ‘big’ and ‘little’ privilege that plague our society on every level…Vertical cuddling…removes much of the risk of physical discomfort and all of the semiotic violence that spooning conveys.”

That’s right. I’ve been inflicting violence on my wife all these years. And not just violent violence. Semiotic violence. Which I think means, like, really bad violence.

To be fair, this article hasn’t been well received even by regular Slate readers. Despite the strong backlash, Slate hasn’t pulled the article or deleted the approximately 500 negative comments (out of approximately 500 total comments). And the author surprisingly didn’t mention racism, the old Slate standby, in his article. Maybe it was an editorial oversight.

One or two Slate commenters have asserted the article was satire. Sounds like wishful thinking to me. In the recent past, Slate published the ridiculous rant of a man who hates himself for enjoying grilling, because grilling is stereotypically masculine. So no, it’s not likely this article was a joke. And if Slate claims it was? Sorry, bro. Calling this article satire is like writing a “satirical” article about Ben Carson believing evolutionary science comes from the devil. Fact isn’t satire.

Trust me, I wanted it to be satire. As I read the article I searched for humor/irony/sarcasm, found nothing to smile at, and instead felt a wide range of other emotions. They weren’t solely along the lines of “is this dude serious?” What I felt was more like hatred, pity, mildly homicidal rage, more pity, immeasurable disgust, bemusement…and, eventually, gratitude.

Yes, gratitude. Slate, which has published numerous ridiculous, moronic, “help help, I’m being repressed!” articles over the years, actually did something good this time. They thought they were identifying yet another unforgivable inequality of modern society; what they actually did was collect, in one place, every reason we should despise the Far Left.

The Far Left is personified by the hand-wringing, hysterical little twit of a Slate writer quaking with outraged moral indignation over the way I sleep with the woman I love. He embodies the Far Left’s Desperate Desire to be Offended. Like all leftist extremists, he assumes his beliefs are morally superior to evil spooners (i.e., all regular people). He showcases the mix of arrogance, hypersensitivity, and urge to control others that marks the cult of the Far Left.

Don’t get me wrong. The Far Right pisses me off A LOT. But if, say, a scrawny criminal attacked me with a knife in a subway train, at least conservatives would likely take action to save my life. Far Left Beta males would not only flee in terror, they’d post online about how they feel justified in refusing to risk their own lives to save an innocent man.

Slate’s article makes me grateful I was raised around men – some conservative, some liberal, but all actual men – who worked hard, crafted valuables with their own hands, killed and ate animals, fixed engines, got farmers’ tans, shot Nazis, beat up neighborhood punks, and provided a blanket of childhood security I didn’t even know I had. I’m thankful those men weren’t sad, spoiled victims going fetal with grief over normal life. I’m proud my role models weren’t, like Slate’s writing staff, the functional equivalent of angsty pre-teen girls. I’m happy the men who raised me were polar opposites of this Slate author, who’s pretty much Pajama Boy but without the masculinity.

But mostly, I’m grateful to Slate for showing the true meaning of “privilege”.

Slate has spent considerable time railing against the evils of privilege. White privilege, straight privilege, male privilege, cis privilege, ableist privilege, and now spooning privilege. The one privilege they failed to mention, but perfectly described in this article, is Whiny Bitch Privilege.

Whiny Bitch Privilege (psychiatrists call it WBP) happens when someone is so safe, so sheltered, so free of actual problems they create them out of thin air. Whiny Bitches, even if they’re actually white and privileged enough to attend an Ivy League University, are microaggressed when fellow students joke about their southern accents, or need “safe spaces” when a guest speaker threatens to present an opposing viewpoint. When a Whiny Bitch is traumatized by something like anxiety-triggering applause instead of non-anxiety-triggering jazz hands, they assert their Whiny Bitch Privilege to demand others stop conducting benign, innocuous, nonthreatening acts of human normality.

Slate has shown us real privilege: a life so worry free, one can choose to be offended to tears by absolutely nothing.

Chris Hernandez is a 20 year police officer, former Marine and currently serving National Guard soldier with over 25 years of military service. He is a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and also served 18 months as a United Nations police officer in Kosovo. He writes for BreachBangClear.com and Iron Mike magazine and has published two military fiction novels, Proof of Our Resolve and Line in the Valley, through Tactical16 Publishing. He can be reached at chris_hernandez_author@yahoo.com or on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ProofofOurResolve).